My clients are smart. They’ve achieved personal and professional success. They’re leaders, whether formally or informally. They’re usually quite self-aware. Many lead lives that serve the greater good.

So why do these smart, accomplished leaders hire me as a coach?
It has to do with what I call the growing edge, which is simply when circumstances in life move us towards new awareness and new action. Maybe it’s entering a new life stage, embracing a new business opportunity, a shifting personal relationship, or something painful such as illness or an intimate death. These particular opportunities call us to pay attention and then act with intention. A good coach helps you to learn from your own life, then launch you into meaningful action.

Exploring this territory has long been my passion. That’s why I’ve chosen The Growing Edge (SM) as a theme for my work and why I’m paying attention to my own growing edge.
Example: My professional goal is raise the bar in my coaching career. I am opening the door to new clients who are poised to take major personal or professional leaps and prepared to engage premium-level coaching support as they do so. Sounds straightforward, but even promoting myself through this blog means facing, in a public way, my own doubts, excuses and gremlins:

Are you chuckling right now? Sound familiar?
Coaching is the way to make the most of these risks and challenges. My life’s purpose is to help you tend your growing edge. Ready? Call me to see how we can work together.

Recent Posts

Testimonials from My Clients

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Rick Carson

There is no colleague I respect more than Mary Olk. She has an unwavering commitment to personal and professional growth for her clients and herself. She is a truly gifted inner guide—extraordinarily insightful, self aware, highly skilled, and wise. I am especially proud she has chosen to integrate the Gremlin-Taming® method into her own naturally potent style of facilitating others to tap into and channel their potential. Her clients are beyond fortunate to have her in their lives.

“Working with someone like me, not as goal oriented, is tough! But with Mary I learned you can be goal-oriented and it doesn’t have to be like you’re in the military.

She listens beautifully. She reflects it back with a question that makes me think about it in a way that I hadn’t. And she’s funny.”

Mary MogaHigher Education Administrator

Dayle Quigley

“I am somebody who needs homework. I need someone to say ‘Do X Y and Z and get back in touch,’ instead of ‘Think about this and we will talk.’ Mary structured things for me in that manner. Otherwise it is easy for me to put things on back burner.

There were two big main issues that Mary and I worked with: I had too much on my plate, and my marriage was blowing up. So we worked on both.

I gained a good sense of not only who I was but trusting that I had the answers, which is really where you want to get to: That you can trust yourself with the way you are feeling and that the decisions you are making are right for you.”

Dayle QuigleyHayward, Wisconsin, emergency room physician

Annemarie Estess

“I’ve pretty much doubled business over the course of working with her. I know it is tough to attribute it to one single thing, but I know with certainty that she is a part of what has allowed me to do that. And, working with Mary has helped me have much more authentic conversations with people in my life, whether those are people I’m dating, or my relatives, friends or colleagues. She’s helped me get a clear sense of my voice in all those types of relationship.

She has helped me get out of my own way on the goals that really, really matter to me.”

Annemarie EstessSan Francisco, small business owner and coach trainee

Gabriel Harren

“For sales people in general a great coach is an asset because we are forced to deal with negative emotions every day – there is a lot of rejection and fear. The resilience needed to withstand that is greater when you have an asset like Mary.

She helps me think through what is going on. If there is conflict with my values, she helps me articulate what is going on. From that we trade action steps to progress through a challenge, or take on an opportunity. She takes what is within me and helps me make sense of it and create actionable steps.

Mary does not bring a one-size-fits-all approach – this is a customized approach we have worked on over the past four years.”

Gabriel HarrenMinneapolis, Sales Rep and Entrepreneur

Jane Massengill

THREE WORDS: Professional, Humor, Authentic

Mary's sense of humor, coupled with her raw authenticity, gave me a huge play ground to be myself and to experiment with letting go of concepts about myself that no longer served me. Our work was, and continues to be, life-changing.

I send my closest friends and family to Mary when someone needs a coach. Enough said. I know you'll get nothing but excellence when you work with her.